


The Other Side

by Lady_Ganesh



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:45:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five hundred years leaves time for many incarnations. Eleanor K is a wonderful beta and has my thanks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side

Han was walking to the widow Fan's house when he heard a woman cursing. A normal enough occurrence, but an unfamiliar voice, and he didn't expect a woman's voice to be coming from so far above his head.

He looked up. The woman was attractive enough-- her legs were good, anyway-- and halfway up a tree. "Are you okay?"

"I'm _fine,"_ she said irritably. The leaves rustled around her. She didn't _look_ fine. She looked stuck.

"You sure? Because I can--"

"I'm not buying what you're selling, young man."

_Young man?_ "You are _not_ older than me."

She snorted. "And yet."

"Fine, then. Stay up there for all I care."

Another rustle from the leaves; he was being ignored. Maybe she'd come down when she got hungry, like a cat. Maybe she wasn't even stuck. Maybe she was still doing...something up there. He shrugged his shoulders and started walking again.

And then she cried out, and fell--

He never did quite figure out how he caught her. Still, there she was in his arms, her eyes rolling up into the back of her head, her body trembling slightly.

"This is not how I normally like to meet women," he said. "You sure are pretty, though."

"I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this," a woman's voice said behind him, and that's when he realized who the pretty girl was.

Han had been warned about Qi and her crazy daughter. Repeatedly. Several of the locals even used hand signals. Back when the war that had done for most of the town's men broke out, Qi had been left at home with two children and a third on the way. When she heard her husband had been kidnapped by the enemy, she left her children with her mother-in-law, picked up an iron rake from the back garden, and headed out. She came back bruised and scarred, alone except for the baby strapped to her back. Her husband had died in the war.

The other men were afraid of her; she'd fought like a tigress. The women weren't so afraid, but they'd warned Han about her anyway. Her middle child, the only boy, had died of influenza before his third year; though it was sacrificing her own old age, she insisted both her daughters would be married, and married well. The eldest daughter had been out of the house for years, with children of her own; the youngest-- the one born, or so the legend had it, from her father's ashes-- was a harder task. Widow Qi could drive a hard bargain, the men said, and eventually she'd done so with young Jin. It didn't hurt that the girl was the most beautiful young lady the village had seen in decades.

And then, on the day of the wedding, Jin had experienced the first of the seizures that had made her something of a legend in the village. She was mad, or sick, or gifted by the spirits, or possessed by demons; it all depended on who you asked. The butcher insisted she'd inherited all her mother's rage.

Han looked in the widow Qi's face and guessed that the woman had plenty of rage left to spare. "She fell," he said, helplessly. "And...."

"Put her down," Qi commanded. "Carefully."

Han obeyed. "Is she okay?"

"She'll be all right," Qi said, standing protectively over her shaking daughter. "She's not mad, you know."

Han nodded. He was a little afraid to do anything else.

"I took her to the temple," she said. "After the first time. They said the spirits spoke through her. They said it was a gift."

He nodded again. There wasn't much else to do but watch Jin, and that was just _freaky,_ so he listened to Qi instead.

"What are you doing here?"

"On my way to Widow Fan's," he said, grateful to have an explanation. "She needs help with her fence."

"I'll just bet she does," Qi said darkly. "I--"

Jin interrupted them both, her voice as clear as if she hadn't recently passed out in Han's arms. "What the hell am I doing here?"

"You fell," Han said.

"Shit," she said, sitting up and putting her face in her hands. "Everything's blurry."

"What were you doing halfway up a tree, anyway?" Han asked.

"There was a bird," she said. "It was important."

"What, it fell out of the nest?"

"Mmm," she said. "I had to save it."

Han looked over at Qi. "Nature lover?"

"Hardly," Qi said.

"I had to," she insisted. "It was important."

"You told me to drown the dog when it got sick," Qi said.

Jin pulled her knees up, looking oddly regal. "He wasn't important. Besides, he died anyway."

Qi sighed. "But the bird was important."

Jin nodded.

"Not always easy having a daughter who talks to the spirits?" Han asked sympathetically.

"It _has_ been known to test my patience," Qi said wryly. She really was beautiful, in an asskicking kind of way. Her eyes were...startling.

Jin's eyes, impressive in their own right, flitted between Qi and Han. "You two done? Fan's probably getting impatient." Her tone indicated wholesale dismissal; of Han, of Qi, and especially of Widow Fan.

"Uh," Han said. "Yeah."

 

Fan was, as he'd expected, more than glad to have his services. The plumbing was leaking under the sink, the cupboards needed repair, and he was sure she'd come up with something once _that_ was done. Preferably something that required him to stretch, bend over, or pull his shirt off.

Han didn't have a bad life. It was nice seeing different towns, different people, different women. Usually he left when the work ran out, but once in a while he had to run out just ahead of an angry husband or son. Wasn't anything he couldn't handle.

This town wasn't bad. The war had left a whole generation of horny, lonely widows, and most of them were content to look and not touch. Not that touching was always a bad thing. Older women had stamina. Still, he liked it when there wasn't any confusion. He did odd jobs and looked pretty. He wasn't a whore.

"You can stay here tonight," Fan said. "There's a spare bedroom; I'll make breakfast."

"I gotta get back," he said. "Kind of you to offer."

 

More often than not after that, his route took him by Qi's. He told himself it was coincidence, but he knew better. Qi was smart and sharp, and he liked her roundness, her quick, clever eyes. She was older, sure. But he was used to that. She didn't need him, which he wasn't used to. In fact, when he passed by and she was busy-- working in the front yard's garden, carrying groceries-- she refused any offer of assistance, even the free kind. But still, she looked at him, and sometimes he even managed to catch her doing it.

She wasn't the kind of woman you could court.

But Han hadn't made his way on his own for a decade without being flexible.

 

Jin was weeding in the garden when he came up to the house. "Hey," he said. "You guys got a sharp knife? Maybe an axe?"

Her suspicious eyes pinned him. "Why?"

He held up the chicken he'd gotten at Lin's house. It struggled a little, but had mostly given up the fight. "I don't."

_What a sour expression on such a pretty face,_ Han thought as she got up. "You let someone pay you with a _chicken?"_

"It's young," he said, holding it out at arm's length. "It'll be good."

"So what, we kill the chicken, you share the meat?"

Han nodded.

Jin sighed. "We have a knife," she conceded. "Mother will have to do it, and she's at market right now. Come on in the gate, you look like an idiot standing out there with a chicken in your hand."

"I think it's a rooster," Han said, eyeballing it. It eyeballed him back.

"You _think?"_ A world's worth of disgust were contained in the words.

"Mom worked for a rich family, in the city. We didn't have animals."

"You can't even butcher," she concluded with disgust. She walked over to a small shed near the house and rummaged in it until she found a crate. "Put it in here," she said. "I'm not letting it shit all over the yard."

Han obeyed-- it was hard _not_ to obey her-- and Jin settled back to weeding. "I'm not like my mother," she said, after a few minutes. "If you want to stand around here, find yourself something to do."

"Um," he said, feeling stupid. "What should I be doing?"

"You can rake between the plants, get the weeds out that way. You _can_ tell which are the weeds, can't you?"

He could. "Yeah."

She stood up after a few minutes to inspect his work. "Hn," she observed, and that was approval enough.

They'd been working for something like half an hour when she said, "There's no money in this house."

He'd heard rumors both ways. He stuck the rake further into the soft earth. "Yeah, I know. I'm not a thief."

She walked directly into his line of vision, the bright embroidery on her dark skirt catching his eye first. "So tell me, Han. If it was your wallet, you're at the wrong house. If it was your cock, you'd be sniffing after me. So what is it?"

For a moment, he wondered what it'd be like to be so pretty that you _knew_ it, that men talked about it, that people decided who and what you were just from looking at your perfect face. Then he realized what Jin was actually asking. "I," he said. "I'm just. I got this chicken, and--"

"Don't treat me like I'm an idiot," Jin snapped. "You think the Widow Fan doesn't have a knife?"

"Then you should know what Widow Fan would want if I brought that bird over," he snapped back. It was true enough, after all.

She didn't back down. "I've seen you look at her." She didn't mean Fan.

"She's looked back, too. So what?"

Jin sighed. "Never mind. Just get back to work."

He did, and a few minutes later Qi had returned, her market basket in hand. "What's this?" she asked, eyeing them both.

"He has a chicken," Jin said. "You kill it, we all eat it."

"Oh," Qi said, and Han hadn't stopped working, but he could feel her eyes. "I see."

"It's young," Han said, digging stubbornly at a pigweed that had taken strong root in the garlic. "It should be good."

"Is it?" Qi said, walking over to the crate. The chicken squawked.

"Who knows?" Jin said. "He's an idiot."

"Now, now," Qi said, without much heat. "Must you insult guests? Especially when they've brought us food?"

"I'm going in the house," Jin said. "Try to restrain yourselves." She put her spade down and walked inside.

"I didn't raise her to speak like that," Qi said.

Han couldn't help but grin at that. "You sure?"

Qi ignored him. "Well," she said. "You'll need to do more than watch. I'm not as young as I used to be, and Jin's not safe around hot water or knives."

"That's fine," he said.

 

Turned out butchering a chicken was _disgusting._ Han had seen raw meat before, but he was unprepared for the sheer amount of blood, much less the way the damn feathers _stuck_ to everything afterward. Qi expected him to do the lion's share of the plucking, especially once she'd stuck her head in the bedroom door and realized Jin was asleep. "She needs a lot of rest," Qi said. "More than she used to." She did a lousy job hiding the concern in her voice.

"Not much of a gift," Han said.

"No," Qi said. "Not that I expected more from the gods."

Han looked at the corpse of the chicken. "I'm glad I grew up in the city. This is _nasty."_

"You won't complain when you're eating it," Qi said. "Now shut up and pluck."

He shut up, he plucked, but he watched her while he did it, as she sharpened her knife and washed the blood off, well, everything. The plucking was unpleasant but pretty mindless, and Qi's focus remained razor-sharp. Her hair was greying and kept in a perfectly tended knot in the back of her head, and while her apron was stained with blood, her dress remained spotless. He could catch her shape when she shifted from one task to another.

Han was fairly certain you weren't supposed to get hard while you plucked a chicken. He was also fairly certain he didn't care. But still, Qi might start looking at him funny, so he focused on the nasty dead chicken until his hormones had calmed down.

She wasn't pretty, exactly. She'd gone beyond pretty, if she'd ever been. But she was beautiful.

Jin coughed from the door of the bedroom, and he almost jumped. "Don't tear the skin," she said.

"I won't," he said, irritably.

"I'm going out," Jin announced, her skirts swishing past him like an empress's. "I'll be back later."

Qi looked up from her washing with sharp, dark eyes. "You're not--"

"I'm not going to the mountain, Honorable Mother. I'm going for a walk. The _atmosphere_ here is stifling." She glared at them both and walked out.

"That girl," Qi said when she'd left, but Han might as well have not been there.

"What's the deal with the mountain?" Han said, hoping to break the tension a little.

"Don't ask," Qi said, shoving her hands into the water again. "I've caught her trying to climb it herself one too many times. Her health...." She shook her head. "She'll freeze to death trying it one of these days." The washing sloshed around. "Are you finished?"

He looked the chicken over carefully. "Think so."

She came over and checked his work. "Not bad," she said, plucking at a few stray feathers. "Skin could be better, but for your first try, it'll do."

"Thanks," he said, hoping sincerely it would be his only attempt at plucking a chicken.

"I need to wash the feathers," she said. "Want me to do your shirt first?"

He looked down. There was a bloody clump of feathers stuck just below his armpit, and a few streaks of blood across the chest. "Yeah," he said. "Thanks." He peeled it off and handed it to her.

She walked back to the washbasin. "We don't keep animals any more, since the dog died. Not worth the trouble. Jin can't hold a knife any more, and I'm not as strong as I was."

"I can cook it," he said. "If you want me to."

She turned to him, raising an eyebrow.

"I told you, Mom worked in the city. She was in the kitchens. They were always dead by the time they got back there."

Qi nodded. "All right," she said. "I'll finish this up."

The chicken was not as young as he'd been promised, but not as old as he'd feared; it'd cook up well enough. He could take the breast and wings for dinner and leave the rest stewing. As Qi butchered the animal with disconcerting efficiency, he found the pantry and sorted through the vegetables and spices. It was stocked carefully, though a bit spare; the work of someone with more common sense than cash.

She laid the meat carefully on the kitchen counter. "You don't have to--"

"I like to," he said. "Most people don't want me in to cook. I kinda miss it."

"All right," she said. She picked up a book from her table and sat down with it.

Jin came back half an hour later. "I thought you two would have settled this by now." She sounded disappointed.

"Settled what?" Han asked. Jin looked at him like he was an idiot, which was answer enough. _That's up to your mother,_ he wanted to say, but even he wasn't _that_ stupid. She sidled over to the pot and sniffed.

"Not bad," she said. "Better than anything Mother cooks."

"I _am_ still here in the room," Qi snapped.

"Of course you are, Han's got his shirt off."

Han took a deep breath and tried to continue cooking as though Jin hadn't said anything at all. He could hear Qi rising from her chair, and he tried to ignore that too. "How are you feeling?" she asked, eventually, in a voice just short of murder.

"Better," Jin said. "I'm going to go over and sew at Zi's tomorrow morning."

"Really?"

"It's about time I got out of this house," Jin said. "Besides, you've always told me I need to improve my embroidery."

"Your embroidery is terrible," Qi said. "But that's not the reason you're going over."

"Does it matter?" Jin challenged.

Han stirred the pot again and wished there was something he needed to do-- a missing ingredient he hadn't thought of, a side dish he'd missed, _anything._

Qi sighed. "I suppose it doesn't."

 

Against all expectations, dinner was pleasant. Jin ate Han's cooking with relish, surfacing once in a while from her meal to talk with less than her usual vinegar. Qi smiled and even joked a little with her daughter. Han told them stories about traveling, places he'd been, people he'd met-- he tried to go light on the women, of course, but he still ended up in the middle of a story about a pretty farmer's daughter who was far more interested in him than she in her.

"Her father, of course, didn't want her anywhere _near_ a drifter like me, and hey, I agreed with him. She wanted kids and a house and and I was seventeen-- I wanted a job and a bed and maybe somebody to share it with once in a while, but I sure didn't want to get married. So in comes Chen, big as a damn bull and twice as angry, and he says, 'No daughter of mine will marry _anyone_ like you!'" He shook his chopsticks for emphasis. "So I said, 'Fine.' And he just--" He mimed Chen's look of shock. "'What's wrong with you? Why don't you want to marry my daughter!?' So in the end, I got run out of the village because I _didn't_ want to marry her."

"What about now?" Jin asked, with calculating eyes. "Still don't want to get married?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno," he said, honestly. "I'm okay the way I am, I guess."

"And children?"

"No," he said. "Not for me." Not with the way his mother and sister died. Maybe he'd escape it, but he'd be damned if he passed it on to anyone else.

Jin was measuring him up; she had been all meal, but she was getting obvious about it now. _So what is it?_ he heard again in his mind. She rose from the table. "Decent meal," she said, shoving her chair back. "Thanks for the chicken."

Qi raised her eyes. Jin ignored her and walked over to the window. She was looking at-- or looking for-- something. Han suspected that if he walked over, he wouldn't have any idea what she saw.

Sure it was a gift. Just the kind of gift nobody would want if it were offered.

His shirt was still wet after dinner, so he told Qi he'd pick it up in the morning and went back to the boardinghouse.

"Fan stopped by," He said. "She wondered where you were."

"I had dinner out," he said, grinning at her.

She grinned back. "She'll be disappointed."

Han shrugged his shoulders and went to bed.

 

He didn't sleep well, even after jerking off. He kept thinking about Qi's skin, her sharp jawline, the skin on the inside of her wrists. Her smell kept him staring at the ceiling for a good half hour.

He almost got up and went to the house, but he was afraid Qi wouldn't know who he was-- or worse, would recognize him-- and come after him with a knife.

Even _that_ thought got him kind of hot. He was hopeless.

At some point between the end of the dark and the beginning of the light, someone rapped hard on his window. He jumped, then peered out into the not-quite-dawn.

It was Jin.

"I don't care if you fuck her," she said. "Just make your mind up about it."

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Han hissed, before he could think better of it.

"Quite a bit," she snapped back.

He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. "Look," he said. "Don't you think it's up to your mother?"

"What are _you_ doing about it?"

"I brought a chicken," he said, aware of _exactly_ how pathetic that sounded.

"I'll be sewing all morning," she said. "Do what you're going to do and stop acting like a teenager."

"It's none of your business what we do," he said, even though _that_ sounded like a teenager too.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving her hand. "Just _do_ it already. Or not. I'm almost twenty-five; I'm too old to deal with this crap." She turned away.

"Hey," he called after her, but not too loud, and she ignored him. He didn't know what he would've said to her if she _had_ turned back.

He rested his forehead on the sill and sighed.

 

The hinge had broken on He's front door in the night, and he helped her fix it when he first got up. It was the decent thing to do, and he suspected she was charging him less rent for helping out. And maybe he was stalling, but the hinge needed fixing.

Jin had left by the time he went to Qi's; Qi was outside, hanging up sheets to dry. He watched her for a while before he walked up to the gate. She watched him as he opened the gate and walked inside.

"Hey," he said.

She didn't say anything. Her eyes were sharp and even darker than he'd realized.

"I don't have a chicken," he said. "I'm just here."

"How old are you?" she asked.

"I'm twenty-two," he said.

She shook her head and sighed. "You'd better come in the house," she said. "The neighbors will talk enough as it is."

"Yeah," he said, and swallowed. "Okay."

She kissed him once they had the door closed behind them, pushing his back up against the wall. She tasted sweet, and her body was warm and and generous and perfect. "You're younger than my daughter," she said.

"I don't care," he said.

She smiled against his cheek. "I noticed," she said.

 

Three weeks later, he was weeding in the garden when a pair of sandals walked into his vision. "My sister isn't well," the voice above them announced.

He looked up. She was tall, and slim, and not as pretty or young as Jin, but in the same family of looks. "You must be Hua," he said. "Nice to meet ya."

"Listen," she said. "I don't know what you intend. But there's no--"

"Hua." Jin's voice, annoyed, from inside the house. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be wiping your mother-in-law's ass?"

Hua's glare was enough to set _fires._ Yeah, they were sisters all right. Han fled into the house as Jin walked out.

"What's going on?" Qi asked him.

"Hua," he said, waving vaguely at the garden. "Jin."

Qi rolled her eyes. "You might as well get comfortable," she said. "They'll be out there a while."

He slipped an arm around her waist. "All right," he said. "Get comfortable with me."

"She's probably here about you," she said, not really pushing him away.

He squeezed her, soft familiar curves against his hip. "Then we'd better stay in the back of the house."

He was kissing her when the yelling started. She sighed, straightened her dress, and walked out of the house. She returned dragging Jin by the arm. "I'm _fine,"_ Jin protested. "She's being ridiculous, and you know--"

"First," Qi said, releasing Jin's arm, "I don't _care_ if you're right, you two don't need to have fights in the front yard. Second, why on _earth_ were you--"

"It's _not her business,"_ Jin snapped. "What either of us do. Or who either of us do it with-- and she wouldn't believe he's screwing _you,_ anyway. I've _had_ it with her."

Qi sighed. "The two of you never got along."

"She's got her own life, her own family," Jin said, settling and re-settling in the chair like an agitated cat. "She shouldn't try to run ours."

They were still arguing as Han walked out of the house. Hua was still there, standing by the gate with the wounded dignity of an empress in exile. "Look," he said. "I don't want to get into the middle of this."

"Yet here you are," Hua said.

"Yeah," he said. He pushed his hair back from his face. "Look, Qi says it's not like it was. She's gotten worse. The more upset she gets, the more seizures she has." She'd had one of the big ones two days ago; he'd never seen her quite so bad before. "Thought you'd want to know."

Hua's face didn't quite move. "I see," she said.

"You can do what you want," he said. "It ain't my business. They ask where I am, I've gone to help He paint."

She didn't answer. He hadn't expected her to.

Hua was gone and Qi and Jin more or less calmed by the time he got back. "He says I work another day, she'll give me a goat," he reported. "If we want it."

Qi raised her eyebrows. "A young one?"

"The mother's kidding now. We could fatten it through the summer, or use it for milk."

"You ever raised a goat?" Jin asked.

"You know I haven't," he said. "But your mother has."

"Take the goat," Qi said. "We can raise it, if you can help slaughter."

 

He moved in that fall. They had ten good years. Hua continued to glare and Jin continued to try to climb the mountain, but the only real problems were Jin's occasional fights with Zi's useless brute of a husband. The worst one was when she found a knife from Zi's kitchen to threaten him with; they'd had to drag Jin from one door and Yan out the other. Still, Yan spent most of his time traveling, which kept things quiet enough, and Han was pretty sure Yan never hit Zi after Jin started swinging that knife around. Zi's kids liked Jin; they were about the only people in town-- aside from Zi, Han and Qi-- who weren't afraid of her. They were certainly the only ones brave enough to climb into her lap and ask for stories.

Then Zi died giving birth to her sixth, and Jin shut herself in her room for two months. Qi bore it stoically; Han yelled, refused to bring any food in, told Jin she was being a baby. But Zi had always treated her as a friend, an equal; no wonder she was so devastated.

She finally came out on a Tuesday. "The bird died, too," she said, and neither Han nor Qi had the faintest idea what she meant.

Three years later, with Jin's seizures worsening in frequency and scope, Qi fell in the garden. Han had to carry her in.

"How long have you been sick?" he demanded.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Does it matter?"

They brought in the doctor from two towns over, who prescribed ox gall and bitter herbs. Han dutifully stewed them every morning, and they helped with the pain Qi had been hiding, but they felt the end getting closer.

It would've been all right if the cough hadn't started around then. Probably stress. Didn't matter; either way he knew he was fucked. By the time Qi finally died, he was finding blood on his pillow in the morning.

Hua came to the funeral. She didn't look at Han. She and Jin spoke to each other for a moment, quietly, and Jin didn't seem too upset afterward, so that was okay. Han drank gallons of the tea the doctor had prescribed and hoped he wouldn't pass out before he shoveled his spadeful of dirt onto the grave.

He dropped into bed afterward and slept for a day and a half.

They carried on for another year, pretending that things were perfectly normal and they weren't both getting worse. Han sold the goat and started and talking with Zi's oldest about maybe taking Jin in when he was gone. Maybe even before then; he remembered how his mother and sister had died. He didn't want anyone watching. Better to go out alone.

Fall turned to winter, and he fought to get enough wood in for the season. Jin stacked, salted meat, and helped with the canning as much as she was able. They didn't speak much. There wasn't much to say, any more.

One night, when the snow was falling in fat, shaggy flakes, she woke him up. She was naked, and even in her ill health, even more than a decade after he'd met her, she was still the most beautiful woman in the village.

"What are you--?" Even as he asked, his hand was pushing the blanket away.

"I'm tired of being pitied," she said, straddling him.

It was hard to argue with that.

She was more aggressive than her mother had been-- and how fucked up was it he was thinking _that--_ and needier, though that wasn't a surprise. She was slick and enthusiastic, and it was pretty good the first time, and not too bad the second time either. She was ready for a third round, but Han was fairly certain it'd kill them both. "Lemme get some rest," he said, and she rolled her eyes and let him fall asleep.

She was gone when he woke up, shivering from one of his night sweats. It took him a few drowsy minutes to realize she was _gone._ So was her scarf and coat.

She'd had a good two-hour head start, at least. He cursed and got his own coat, mittens, a spare blanket.

It took him another hour to find her. Her fingers were blue. He shoved the mittens over her hands. "What--"

"Don't," she said. "Don't try to stop me."

"You set me up," he said.

"Of course I set you up." She was still walking, too slowly, and he felt a sickening certainty in the pit of his stomach. "You didn't think I was a virgin, did you?"

"Who the hell did you ever sleep with when I was around?"

She snorted. "Men," she said.

The snow was falling harder this high up, the flakes more compact. He'd kept his mittens on, but he couldn't feel his fingers any more.

"C'mon," he said. "Come on home."

"He's been calling me since I was eight," she said. "Over and over. It's never stopped. You know what that's like? Thirty years of it? I want to see him. I want to find out why. The bird died, Zi died, none of it--" She shook her head. _"Why?"_

"It was Zi," he said, stupidly. "Wasn't it?"

"Does it matter?" she said miserably. "I just want to get up this damn mountain already."

He coughed, and it felt-- as it always felt, now-- like his chest was breaking apart. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

He put his arm out so she could lean on him, but they wound up leaning against each other, walking as quickly as they dared in a last effort to keep the cold at bay. The drifts were up to their knees. "Maybe it'll be Father up there," she said. "His spirit."

"I hope not," Han said. "I'd hate to see what shape he's in now."

Jin barked out a laugh. "You know she killed him?" she asked. "Did she ever tell you? He was passing information to the other side. She found out, and killed him herself, with that damn rake of hers. She told Zi's mother years ago. Swore her to secrecy. Said she didn't want her children to know they were the daughters of a traitor."

He didn't know, but he couldn't say it came as a shock. "I'm surprised she didn't dig him back up and kill him again," Han said. "Just in case."

"I never told her about the voice," Jin said. "That's probably why."

He gripped her more tightly and laughed.

 

Hua had insisted that Han had abandoned her sister, but Fai, Zi's oldest, suspected otherwise. For the first few weeks she kept the fire going in the hearth, but then, as winter wore on, she shut the house up and waited for spring.

When the snows finally cleared, she led the rest of her siblings up the mountain to search. They found the bodies huddled together, a few thousand feet shy of the summit, just as the air began to thin.

"Why do you think she always wanted to come up here?" Fai's brother asked. He'd brought up a blanket to help take them back down the mountain. They'd bury Han in Qi's plot, but Fai had half a mind to take Jin to their family plot. Father was traveling; he couldn't complain, and even he wouldn't bother the dead once they were buried.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I heard someone say that on the southern side of the mountain, they say there's some kind of monster, but I can't imagine her being so superstitious."

"I'm going to miss her," her brother said.

"Yeah," she said, and put an arm around his shoulders. "Let's get them home."

**Author's Note:**

> No, I don't think epilepsy gives you psychic powers. Jin just had both.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/62008) by [Lady_Ganesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh)




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